So there's a fair amount of discussion about Paizo, because they are the only major publisher who is still putting out new 3rd edition compatible stuff, their art is good, and they are shifting everything over to "Pathfinder" which makes people wonder if they should switch their games over to Pathfinder as well. As it happens, they should not. But there's no shame in asking why. So to act as a sort of "go to" thread about why you should not make the switch to Pathfinder, we're making an FAQ of sorts. Common questions can be integrated into it and given coherent answers with a minimum of hyperbole.

I heard that Pathfinder is compatible with 3rd edition rules. As such, does it really make any difference if I use pathfinder or not?

Unfortunately, it does. Pathfinder makes a lot of minor rules modifications that really add up to being quite confusing. It even calculates defenses and hit points slightly differently so that monsters out of the monster manual are not usable as-is. With almost inconsequential changes to almost every spell as well as the basic monster combat routines, you'll be running into something you have to look up almost every combat round - and that seriously slows down play. Pathfinder is less compatible with 3.5 rules than 3rd edition sourcebooks or d20 modern sourcebooks are. Quite a (negative) achievement for something for which compatibility was supposed to be a life goal.

Didn't Pathfinder do the biggest open RPG playtest in history? Doesn't that mean they solved all of D&D's problems?

No. In this case, the "playtest" was a lie. Destructive playtesting was not only not encouraged, it was actively and specifically rejected. The Paizo leadership only wanted to hear about whether people had fun or not. Which means that the most pried playtest reports were seriously ones in which the players spent all night in immersive roleplaying or where the fun centered around "awesome" artifacts that broke the rules. In short - things that didn't use the rules at all and didn't demonstrate anything. People who actually ran apples to apples comparisons, same game tests, or repeated experiments to get controlled results or regressed bugs were not only ignored, they were banned from their forums.

Their playtest was a marketing ploy and nothing more. It was never intended to uncover problems or produce real results.

Doesn't Paizo's system address some of the most broken parts of D&D?

Not really, no. If you talk to 95% of the D&D players who are aware of balance issues in the D&D game who don't eat paste they will probably describe the most central issue as either "Fighters suck" or "Spellcasters are broken" - these statements are mostly speaking logically equivalent in terms of central balance issues because they both describe the relationship Wizards > Fighters. So to make D&D less unbalanced, it would be logical to either make spellcasters less powerful or sword wielders more powerful. Pathfinder does the opposite, and mysteriously makes spellcasters more powerful and fighters less powerful. Thus, it's more unbalanced.

How are spellcasters more powerful? Aren't a bunch of spells nerfed?

First of all, nerfing "a spell" doesn't actually do anything to spellcasters in terms of overall power as long as there is still at least one spell that still makes them win at the same level. It makes spellcasters less interesting to have less spells they want to use, but it doesn't make them any worse to use spell X to win instead of spell Y. While many staples of the wizard arsenal (like Glitterdust) have gotten nerfed to make them severely less good, and the literal death spells have been reduced to inconsequential damage dealers, there are still spells that remove enemies from combat at every level. The fine folks at Paizo even added some.

OK fine, I understand that spellcasters aren't any less powerful casting ghoulish hunger instead of finger of death, but you said they were more powerful. How can that be?

Well, Pathfinder gives out more feats (which helps caster DCs), gives everyone a +2 to a mental stat (which means higher caster DCs), gives single classed characters (like spellcasters) bonus hit points or skill point for no reason, raises the hit points of the caster classes, and gives spellcasters bonus free class features to "encourage them to not take prestige classes" - except that these class features start at level 1 so you get bonus free swag even if you jump ship for a PrC at the first possible opportunity. Also all the changes seem to miraculously benefit spellcasters. Specialist wizards can now use wands and scrolls out of their "banned" schools, and even make those items without penalty. Specialist wizards essentially don't even have spell selection limits anymore, but they still have bonuses. It's good to be the king.

More feats? Doesn't that help warriors too?

Not really. Anything you'd want to do with combat feats costs more feats now. The +4 bonus from Improved Disarm has been divided into two feats, for example. Spell Focus is unchanged of course.

What? Tell me more about how warriors got the bad touch? Improved Disarm sucks and it's difficult for me to imagine that being two feats.

Well part of that is the decision to "streamline" all the optional combat maneuvers into "not working." Apparently, someone at Paizo really doesn't like trip fighters, grapplemancers, or dungeoncrashers. I'm not super clear why, since by most accounts those represent rather limited but at least functional warrior characters in 3rd edition rules. A Tripstar may be boring, but he's no more boring than Sir Chargealot and at least he's differently viable. No more in Pathfinder. The core is that instead of rolling against an opposed roll, you now roll against a static number that happens to be what you'd need to have rolled if your opponent rolled a 15. Also, all the things that gave you +4 on these tests give you a +2 instead. Also the rules on trip, grapple, disarm, and bullrush have been changed slightly so that that they aren't as penalizing for the character it happens to, further disenfranchising the maneuver specialists.

Ouch. What if I wanted to make a "does big damage Fighter" like the Sir Chargealot that you mentioned instead of one of the maneuver specialists? I mean, that is also a standard character in 3.5 and it can work OK. I heard they gave Fighters bonus damage and AC or something?

Well, they nerfed Power Attack.

What?

Yeah. Power Attack, they nerfed it. Also, Cleave was apparently too powerful. You can kind of keep up on the damage train as specifically an archer, because like everyone else who ever wrote up a bunch of combat feats they couldn't resist the siren's song of adding extra feats that boost your rate of fire, and like all the others they all stack and you do get more feats. But the lancer and the grinder suffer big time. They need more feats sunk into doing more damage just to keep up with their old damage. More extra sunk feats than they get extra feats. Did I mention how it hoses multiclass characters (like, you know, warriors)? Yeah, it does that.

Are things at least clearer?

Oh heavens no. Not only are the rules specifically in a state of flux, with Jason going in and rewriting stuff with and without blog messages to that effect all the time, but a lot of the stuff that just makes no sense. I can't tell you how grappling works in pathfinder either, but it seems to actually be a super bad plan for the grappler.

So why would I use Paizo's rules?

I can't answer everything man.

How does Pathfinder address bookkeeping? Bookkeeping is annoying and I don't want to do it.

Pathfinder likes to force people to keep tracks of rounds per day. Seriously. Bards and Barbarians have to keep track of individual rounds of power usage. Also, a lot of things have very short and even nonstandard durations. How do you feel about tracking a 3 round buff? How about a seven minute buff?

So are Bards somehow more weak sauce than they were before? Is that even possible?

Well, kind of. Yeah. They are a lot more annoying, and they basically can't give their skill songs for a take 20 anymore because they have a limited number of rounds worth of singing for the whole day. Boosting someone while they take 20 on a task runs you through 20 rounds, and you have to be a seriously buff dude to have that many rounds of song. But the real meat of the matter is that bards were already a really weird case where in order to be an effective bard you had to eventually choose a direction to go with it and take one of the bard paths like Snowflake Wardancer or Sublime Chord that sacrificed attempting to compete in one or more of the many areas that Bards gradually lost level appropriateness in exchange for being level appropriate in one or two fields. Those options don't seem to exist in Pathfinder, so every Bard is doomed to gradually lose ground to mediocrity and finally obscurity in all fields and never justify their existence or regain the spotlight in anything.

Is Polymorph Fixed Yet?

No.

I hear great things about the skill system. What's up with that?

Well, the condensed some skills. Some of that goes too far and some of it doesn't go far enough. Gather Information is now part of Diplomancy, but Spellcraft and Knowledge Arcana are still different skills. Whatever. The big deal is that they took away the class skill/nonclass skill difference in rank price and gave people a +3 bonus on all trained skills that are class skills for any of your levels. That means that they can and do drop the stupid 4x skill ranks at first level, so over all it's an improvement. It's not original and they handle it kind of clumsily (there is no difference between putting a skill as a permanent class skill and having it be a class skill for one measly level and there are no synergy bonuses anymore), but it is probably a net gain over using the 3.5 skills out of the box.

You mention Diplomacy, is it fixed?

No. It's still broken, it just also gives you the kinds of plot exposition that you used to get from Gather Information. Paladins come with spy networks now.

Are Sorcerers still getting it in the earhole?

Well, yes. All the spellcasters get class features to go with their bonus save DCs, bonus hit points, free ranks in Concentration, and so on and so forth. This is supposedly to encourage them to not take PrCs. Protip: you still take PrCs, you just also get some bonus class features. Wizards get fat bonuses to various cool shit and Sorcerers get a blood line. Yeah, you get to celebrate your extraplanar bad touch by getting special powers related to your power source. These have a tendency to be shit like demon claws that are frankly really lame. So while the Necromancer wizard gets a free doubled control pool on his skeleton horde, the Sorcerer gets his choice of a wide variety of flavors of bullshit melee combat schticks that he will literally never us because he's still a fucking arcane spellcaster.

Monster Levels? Is that fixed?

No. Like pretty much anything else that you'd really want someone to do a giant overhaul on because the original system didn't work and no one uses it or integrates it into other subsystems, Jason pretty much ignores it. He's too busy nerfing rogues.

What?

Yeah. He went off on this big rant about how it was broken that rogues in the 8th-10th level range were investing in rings of blink and sneak attacking at range. Apparently if you do anything other than tumble into position to deliver a flanking dagger sneak attack you are being "cheesy." The Pathfinder Rogue is outdamaged at high levels by evoker wizards. True story.

Many things in D&D are broken on the face of it. Like rolling for hit points or having different definitions of "day" for purposes of recovering spell slots. Is any of that addressed?

Not really, no.

So my Cleric of Pelor still prepares spells at dawn and my Cleric of Lolth still prepares spells at dusk?

Don't be silly, those gods are copyrighted. Pathfinder has a whole slew of new gods that you don't give a fuck about. But don't worry, they aren't just different in when their priests prepare spells - they have concrete and distinct easter egg bonuses for you to collect. If you're a Dread Necromancer you can cast remove disease spontaneously if you happen to worship that goddess whose name starts with U - so all of them presumably do. It's all written by Sean K Reynolds, the man who has never written a balanced or decent book in his whole life, so you know it's totally fucking unfair and inexplicable at every damn turn.

-Frank

Last edited by FrankTrollman on Fri Jul 31, 2009 8:05 am; edited 1 time in total

Last time I checked grappling (back in the beta pdf) it essentially worked like this:

everybody gets a bonus that derives from...stuff (BAB, str, size, assorted feats). Size bonus are +1/category rather than +4/category.
Basically the bonuses worked out to this:
a 10th level fighter (with all the necessary feats) grappling a fire giant would need a 17+ to do so successfully. Conversely, so would the fire giant. If either was grappling a 10th level mage, they'd roughly need a 7+. (barring wacky spell effects). The mage is missing +5 BAB and roughly 10 points of strength (making up the other +5). The fighters feats and the giants size pretty much balanced out.

So if hulk hogan got in the ring with a nerd, he could totally do whatever he wanted to him. If he got in the ring with Rowdy Roddy Piper, both would say, 'Fuck this' and whip out a sword. Because that actually worked.

I'm glad that my archer got a passing nod in the whole mess. For those stuck with Pathfinder in order to game (my area refuses to play anything but), it'll take a bit to readjust to the changes in the rules, as you need to reanalyze all of your spells to know which ones are still worth it.

What I'm curious about is how the monsters are going to look, because they're coming out with a PF-compatible monster manual; and if they follow the guidelines in the Beta, even the monsters got a nerf. If it's a big enough nerf, then the fighters might still be able to pull their own weight against the opposition._________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

I doubt this will falter or have them file for bankruptcy even if Pathfinder tanks. They still have a shit ton of other products not attached to Pathfinder. This looks like a pretty thorough FAQ on Pathfinder. I will still look at the final product to see what they ultimately make of it._________________"Excuse me. You got your penis in my woman. Correct yourself."

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Koumei wrote:

I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!

Koumei wrote:

I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!

Quote:

Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.

Suppose that's what I get for being busy. Anyways, that covers the overview for the most part. One thing you forgot to mention though is exactly why their 'playtest' was a total waste of time.

None of them know what they're doing. Not the developers, not the players. Well, a few visiting guests have a clue, but those are the ones who are ignored and ultimately banned. So when they aren't just changing stuff for the sake of changing it, they're changing it for the worse, and/or changing it in exactly the opposite way they claim to change it. Given that the place is filled with people who think healing 1d6 per 2 levels (which by the way, is less than a single half decent hit at every single level) is too STRONG, and got it nerfed this should not surprise anyone. And there are many more examples that can be cited proving they do not have even a fundamental understanding of the game they are attempting to alter or how that game changes as you progress through it.

For example, they claimed they were going to make casters better and non casters worse, but did exactly the opposite. This means they are either completely incompetent, or are deliberately lying. There are many more examples of where they did the opposite of their alleged intent. Bookkeeping, backwards compatibility... you can point to at least half of everything they've done and write it off as either opposite of professed intent.

Then there are the things they changed just for the sake of changing, such as the Barbarian, the Bard, and many others. Of course they also changed them from the worse, and again contradicted themselves.

Granted, even a broken clock is right twice a day, but the few ideas they got somewhat right were stolen from somewhere else, and changed for the worse, just not enough so. For example, the skill system isn't TOO bad... but since it's stolen from Saga, if you just rob the source you'll be better off, and so will your game.

What is most galling though is they don't seem to realize how wrong they are. When they do snap out of it they tend to be much better for it (see: Lich Loved) but until then they go around spouting such blatantly false memes as Pathfinder being the 'Melee edition', the developers expressed intent being true, and so forth. This being in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. Which means that even if the Paizo developers did seek feedback, all they would get is a distorted echo chamber, and at best they would be no better off than if they just ignored 99% of their 'playtesters'.

Sir_Neil wrote:

"It would be a shame to see Paizo faltering or filing for bankruptcy over such a fallout."

Odd. From here, "It would be awesome to see Paizo..." seems like a more natural way to start that sentence.

Plus Fucking One._________________

Draco_Argentum wrote:

Mister_Sinister wrote:

Clearly, your cock is part of the big barrel the server's busy sucking on.

Nah, WotC 3.5 is like a fruit salad with a great deal of nuts.
Pathfinder is that same fruit salad, only the fruit has been laying out in the dumpster for a few weeks._________________

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FrankTrollman wrote:

Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.

K wrote:

That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.

Chamomile wrote:

See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.

Did Pathfinder get rid of that fucking 1 min/level duration for buffs 3.5E had a hard-on for?

You know, since it increased book-keeping and player interruption without really nerfing the mojo of people who wanted them. Except for the sword-based classes, for whom it was too much of an inconvenience to buff now.

How about spell slot replenishment? Do clerics of Pelor still rock the faces off of clerics of Lloth? Do wizards still wait until midnight to cast all of their spells?

Is the surprise round still in place? I didn't expect this to be fixed since very few people are even aware that it's a problem, but Pathfinder would earn bonus points for me if they had this attention to detail.

Do spellcasters still burn experience points to craft magic items?_________________

Josh Kablack wrote:

Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

I haven't heard this one before. Explain please? (This oughta be good...)

Quote:

Is the surprise round still in place? I didn't expect this to be fixed since very few people are even aware that it's a problem, but Pathfinder would earn bonus points for me if they had this attention to detail.

I haven't heard this one before. Explain please? (This oughta be good...)

There are two interpretations of negative energy in D&D; one is that negative energy is a dangerous but ultimately neutral force like nuclear power. The other is that negative energy is pure, concentrated evil that does things like make you hunger for the flesh of babies and toilet-paper houses.

We don't even need to go into all of the contradictory examples. Let's just say there's Manual of the Planes and then there's Book of Vile Darkness. Monte Cook wrote Book of Vile Darkness; Dave Noonan and Bruce Cordell wrote MotP. You can see which interpretation D&D leans towards.

Quote:

Count me out of those very few people. Explain this too, please?

Forcing surprise rounds is advantageous if you're a spellcaster but disadvantageous for a sword-based class due to the action system. This is bad enough, but this also leads to stupidity such as the Monkey in a Barrel trick. For those who haven't heard of it, it's where a wizard intentionally keeps an ally out of the loop so that when combat starts there will always be a surprise round which includes everyone in it but the monkey._________________

Josh Kablack wrote:

Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

I haven't heard this one before. Explain please? (This oughta be good...)

There are two interpretations of negative energy in D&D; one is that negative energy is a dangerous but ultimately neutral force like nuclear power. The other is that negative energy is pure, concentrated evil that does things like make you hunger for the flesh of babies and toilet-paper houses. (snip)

BoVD just had actual [Evil] spells, and implied that using them made you a baby eater (BoED was more explicit about that), but negative energy wasn't some kind of damning influence in that book.

The only time I remember Monte Cook ever doing something along the lines of 'negative energy taints your soul' is in Arcana Unearthed. If you ever cast a spell with the negative energy trait, you suffer a -4 penalty to Diplomacy/Gather Info/Handle Animal (& +2 Intimidate) for a week. You don't have these modifiers with other people who also have the taint (undead and demons are perma-tainted), and there are no other effects, so you just not cast a negative energy spell for a week to get rid of the debuff.

This is the same setting where mindless undead basically don't exist, and most of the undead that do exist involve the original's soul being ripped up and stuffed into their rotting body and then subjugated to the necromancer's will (actual Will save to resist control after failing the save to resist being animated). So the setting takes a distinct "Crawling Darkness" choice in its use of negative energy._________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

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EXPLOSIVE RUNES!

Last edited by virgil on Fri Jul 31, 2009 4:53 am; edited 1 time in total

Did Pathfinder get rid of that fucking 1 min/level duration for buffs 3.5E had a hard-on for?

No, doesn't seem so.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Is Polymorph fixed yet?

If by "fixed" you mean "nerfed hard enough to be unplayable", then yes. You see, they split it into a crap-ton of spells each of which gives you only one shape with fixed benefits. "Fixed benefits" idea might actually be good, "crap-ton of spells" is not, particularly for spellcasters with limits on the numbers of spells known.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Is Diplomacy fixed yet?

Again, if by "fixed", you mean "nerfed into uselessness". The difficulties are similar, but they have added "Diplomacy
is generally ineffective in combat and against creatures that
intend to harm you or your allies in the immediate future" and other restrictions. While I agree, that diplomancing people in the midst of combat might be too much, this means that you cannot convince, say, a bunch of thugs, who intend to beat you up for some reason, to leave you alone, or convert people who were ordered by an Evil Overlord to execute you, while they lead you to a scaffold, which, I feel, should be perfectly possible to make Diplomacy non-useless in the world of easily-accessible mindfuck spells.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Are sorcerers still taking it in the earhole for metamagic?

Yes.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

How about monster levels? Is that fixed?

Definitely no.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Do we still roll randomly for hit points every level?

IIRC, there is an option to take a fixed number.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Do spellcasters still burn experience points to craft magic items?

No. The rest of the crafting system is intact. The results are as broken as you can guess.

Note, that as Pathfinder rules change, like, all the time, some of these answers might end up wrong for the final release.

Last edited by FatR on Fri Jul 31, 2009 6:39 am; edited 3 times in total

How do you feel about the skill system (other than it being stolen from saga)?

Fly skill is crap and breaks backwards compatibility. Perception is overtly complicated. Diplomacy is nerfed, which might be a good thing. Skills (with a few exceptions), still are useless compared to spells, at mid-high levels.

MGuy wrote:

What have they changed about monsters exactly? I thought they were being kept pretty much the same.

Judging by the preview, some are nerfed, but some actually are stronger.

MGuy wrote:

If you kept the feats the same and just used the bonus abilities a fighter gets (along with the increase in bonus feats given every 2 levels) would that make them any better?

Yes, but not decisively so.

MGuy wrote:

For that matter what are the GOOD ideas that pathfinder has had/kept?

I like increased hit dice for d4-d6 classes, and new abilities for some classes, including rogue and ranger. Skill consolidation is also nice, although not exactly their idea.

They did remove the XP costs for magic item creation, so now you just spend half the market value to make them after some Spellcraft checks.

Being subject to raise dead just inflicts a negative level that won't go away until you get a restoration spell cast on you. This basically means it costs you 6.000gp in diamonds from the two spells (5k & 1k respectively).

Poison/Disease are treated differently. They deal their ability damage at specific intervals, with a saving throw to prevent the damage from that one instance. Each individual disease/poison has a different condition for when they stop forcing saves; poisons generally stop after the first successful save or after X number of times, whichever comes first.

From what I can tell on the Diplomacy change, it looks more workable than normal 3.5; and I suspect the "generally ineffective in combat and against creatures that intend to harm you" is an escape clause for railroading DMs. Granted, that's not going to happen anyway because they got rid of the option to change someone's attitude in less than a minute of talking; and getting someone that's hostile to listen to you for a solid minute is difficult._________________Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

My meaning: What was actually a good idea or a step in the right direction that they made fall on its face? What half baked ideas can be made into a whole plan?_________________The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
I've always thought it best to never hit a lady, but be sure to beat a bitch. -TOZ

Poison/Disease are treated differently. They deal their ability damage at specific intervals, with a saving throw to prevent the damage from that one instance. Each individual disease/poison has a different condition for when they stop forcing saves; poisons generally stop after the first successful save or after X number of times, whichever comes first.

Huh. Totally forgot about this. Maybe because they change things all the time.